Editor XML files no longer available to use with a new career

@Wolf_pdyou asked me to post this here so you could give it to the attention of Devs. So just tagging you

Hello, after checking with the Devs this was an intentional change for this cycle. The benefit of a FMF filetype is that we can ensure the file has been saved in the PGE and therefore will not falsely appeared as verified in game as can be the case with user edited XML files. 

However, our working assumption has been that, with the ability to import/export XML files within the PGE, users can just import any XML file into the PGE, save as a FMF filetype, and otherwise function in the same way as before. We would need to check if there's any drawback to this method.

Thanks @Zachary Whyte This was the same argument that was given in 2015 but got reverted when the community explained the usages and I'm not sure anything has changed in that time to warrant a backtrack.

You're requiring that either;

 

(1) every user downloads an XML and then uses PGE to convert to FMF before using with the game which would be totally impractical considering the data updates in question are downloaded over a million times each year.

 

(2) or a human has to manually do it. Which prevents the ability to have "live" updates where user gets the latest version to that second. And makes it taxing to do hourly and daily updates because the human has to be online every single day 365 days a year to do it. Which is a massive imposition to people who are just trying to make cool things for the community.

That's quite a big drawback to what seems like not much benefit.

To reiteterare some examples of how XML is used:

(1) for collaborative data updates where 500+ people submit transfers as they happen in real life, this is obviously impossible with the PGE. XML is generated for only 5-10 of the most basic properties such as team, wage, expiry date etc. This can then be downloaded "live" so you always get the latest squads up to that moment when starting a new career. I'm not aware of any reports of this XML being invalid or causing issues despite being downloaded over 1 million times in the past 12 months.

(2) Football APIs can be used to fetch real life fixtures and results and add them to an XML file for each league. Since the game is forced to start on a Monday these are released each Monday morning so people can start saves with real life league tables on that Mondays date.

At the very least some sort of alternative could have been offered such a command line option like "editor.exe verify --in myfile.xml --out myfile.fmf" although that would still probably require running a windows remote machine for $$$ to automate it, which is not ideal either.

Maybe there could be a "verify" button without FM itself when you try and start a new game?

 

 

 

 

I'd like to add something somewhat anecdotal to this. I have a file that has 180+ leagues at level 7 in Korea. For 5 years, the editor has failed to verify the 7th tier at all. It runs the verification, offers no error and keeps the whole file as 6/7 leagues verified. The only way I have been able to use my file is to export it as an XML, edit the file in Notepad to basically 'trick' the file into marking the 7th tier as verified and then using that in game.

This has worked perfectly every year since 2017. And the 7th tier runs flawlessly too in game with no issues, so the editor is just not marking it as verified for no good reason. So working around some the weirdness of the editor is enough of a reason personally to allow XML files to be used still.

Being able to export as an XML is the only way I have been able to get this to work and removing that option just means I can no longer use the large tier 7 in my database.

On 28/11/2022 at 15:46, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello, after checking with the Devs this was an intentional change for this cycle.

IMO this is wrong decision because we often have problems with verification of complex files. And in most cases those files works just fine in game. 

Also every year we have problem with editor in early stages - verification is often imposible for some basic things and we use XML "hacks" to fix that issue - do you really want us to wait 2 months because you removed XML option??

If you want - you can remove xml files from your customer support if you dont wanna mess with force verified files. Thats ok. But dont make huge problems for most editor users without good reason.

 

It is terrible decision to get rid of this.

For us with not as powerful PC's it can take even 45 minutes to one hour to verify complex files (my Croatian database has 9 tiers to verify).

And if I have to make even a small change in the database, I have to spend another 45-60 minutes to verify the file to be able to run the addon in the game.

I agree with @krlenjushka, you can remove xml files from your customer support, that's ok.

Agreed with all of the above here.  Just had to scrap a file that I spent hours working on thinking I could bypass verification in XML.